2004
Volume 34, Issue 2
  • ISSN: 0960-2720
  • E-ISSN: 2666-9730

Abstract

Summary

People with gender dysphoria experience a distressing alienation from their sexed bodies. Theological responses to gender dysphoria range from those who reject both social and medical/surgical transitioning as an unfaithful rejection of the goodness of created embodiment to those who celebrate it as an expression of the diversity of God’s good creation. In this article I challenge these views by bringing to bear insights from eschatology and disability theology. I argue that a commitment to the goodness of creation must allow for an awareness of brokenness in the world as it now is, and the ways in which this brokenness non-culpably impinges on human creatures’ bodies and lived experiences. Without adopting ableist biases, Christian eschatology holds out hope for a future of healing and transformation that may include transformation of the body as well as of desires, affections and experience. We do not know whether the eschatological ‘healing’ of gender dysphoria will take the form of conforming experience to embodied form, or conforming the body to gendered experience. This opens up a diverse range of possible faithful responses to the of gender dysphoria, including but not limited to social and medical transitioning.

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